Blackmailing, Extortion and Sextortion

Extortion, Sextortion & Blackmail: The
Differences
SEPTEMBER 29, 2019

BY AMNA

3
The digital world today is the dominant means of communication used by people in different
places, while this has been great in narrowing distances and facilitating day to day activities, it
has also provided a fertile soil for hostile acts/ behaviours to prosper. Online violence varies in
its forms and manifestations, however, in this piece I would like to address and explain three of
the most pervasive attitudes that are currently trending on social media platforms. Those being
blackmailing, extortion and sextortion.
Blackmailing and extortion are always mistaken for being synonymous, thus used
interchangeably and this could not be further from the truth. For starters, extortion refers to the
form of theft that occurs when an offender obtains money, property, or services from another
person through coercion; and “coercion” ranges from physical assault to verbal threats of future
harm. To further contextualize this act, let’s look into extortion that targets women, on both
online and offline platforms. These acts are often ascribed to the power imbalance that society
constructs between men and women. This provides even more methods of intimidation that an
offender can use against a victim.
On the other hand, blackmailing can be defined as an act of coercion using the threat of revealing
or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless
certain demands are met. This information will most probably be damaging information that can
incriminate or defame the victim of blackmail, bearing in mind that most forms of blackmail are
performed using non-physical means. This gets us to put a line between extortion and
blackmailing, the fine difference lies within the concept of “revealing information”, as a form of
threat used against victims to obtain things against their volition. We can, therefore, say that
blackmailing is a form of extortion that possesses a narrower way of posing a threat. Again, we
can not help but wonder why women and girls are significantly more vulnerable to these kinds
of violations? My guess would be that the notion of “honor” is the driving force behind making
women particularly vulnerable to such infringements and also it is the force behind not only
perpetuating the behaviour but also providing safeguards to the perpetrators.
The significance of “honour” in this context stems from the fact that socially, the responsibility
of upholding a family’s honour “Sharaf” is inherently linked to how the women in that family
carry themselves and lead their lives. Placing this undue burden on women automatically makes
it the woman’s responsibility to protect and preserve her family’s reputation and social status and
thereby in the event that any of those things are endangered she is the first and only person to
blame. This gives us an insight into why women are particularly vulnerable to falling prey to
these vile transgressions. When the perpetrator realizes that his acts of aggression mean very
little when honour is involved, hence the blame automatically gets laid on the woman, the
offender will not only be encouraged to persist in carrying out these acts but will also have very
little reason to refrain from committing such violation since no form of deterrence s in place to
stop them. Furthermore, because of the big role “honour” plays in this crime, it becomes a one-
sided rapport in which the victim plays no part and bears all the blame and consequences. The
influence of “honour” is not limited to making women vulnerable to falling victims of such vile
crimes but it extends to weakening their ability to defend themselves and get the retribution they
deserve. In conservative communities when a woman falls victim to such acts, she is instantly
demonized and stripped off the benefit of the doubt as well as any right to defend herself and tell
her part of the story. This victim blaming dynamic that takes over once a woman’s private life is
exposed further encourages perpetrators to not only indulge in such behaviour but to also go as
far as fabricating stories about their victims just to extort them knowing that they would not face
any form of repercussions.
Lastly, there’s sextortion, it is defined as a form of revenge porn that employs non-physical

forms of coercion to extort sexual favours from the victim. The first use of the term sextortion
arose in the early 1950s in the state of California. Since then, it has become an extremely popular
crime and means of online harassment due to advances in technology and social media
platforms. Here, we can break it down by stating that the benefit the offender is aiming for, is a
sexual favour. It mostly stems from two aspects, abuse of power and sexual exploitation. Abuse
of power can be exemplified when the offender has some sort of power over the victim and thus,
takes advantage of that by making the victim oblige to their demands. Sexual exploitation is
when the offender threatens to disclose private or intimate material of the victim if not meeting
their demands. This mostly happens to women and in a lot of cases from their past intimate
partners, it reiterates the idea of honour and how the victim will be quick to oblige in fear of
having that kind of material disclosed. What aggravates the act of sextortion is that it’s self-
sustained, if a victim of sextortion surrenders to performing a sexual favour, on a regular basis or
even once, the offender will be keen to use that as a way to maintain the sextortionary acts by
threatening to disclose that the victim engaged in that kind of activity with them.
And then we can conclude by stating that “it is crucial for the victim to educate themselves about
these terms and know the nuances of each notion. Knowing the nature of the threat is the first
step to defending oneself and getting the justice deserved. However, the burden of combating
these extremely harmful phenomen does not fall on the shoulders of the victims alone but rather
on all of us, members of society. We need to acknowledge that the sacred beliefs that we hold so
dearly can at some times be harmful to a large group of us and that at times we need to be
flexible and open to re-evaluate the tenets that underlie our actions. It is on us as a society to help
and protect our victims and not shut them and silence them with shame and stigmatization. It is
on us to punish the real offender instead of encouraging him with blaming the victim”

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Extortion, Sextortion & Blackmail: The

Lastly, there’s sextortion, it is defined as a form of revenge porn that employs non-physical

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